Kamakura

I had planned to go to Kamakura with Rachel yesterday. Then came the morning and Rachel couldn't get out of her bed...so in the end I went by myself.

Anyway the weather was really good, and plus it was a Saturday, so there were a lot of people at Kamakura. Out of the numerous temples, I only went to 円覚寺, 鶴岡八幡宮, and 高徳院 (where the big buddha is - although it's smaller than I thought), because I couldn't afford to go to all the temples and pay the admission fees.

The highlight of the day wasn't the temples or the shrine, but the sunset from the beaches of Kamakura. The sky wasn't as clear as I had hoped it to be, but the colours were still pretty amazing. It was also quite windy so it hurt a little when the wind brought up the sand and blown it onto my face.






円覚寺

鶴岡八幡宮







In the evening I met up with Rachel and Karen at JR Yokohama. Karen studies Economics with Japanese at Birmingham. I met her in August '08 through Piotr (who's her senpai), who came travelling to Hong Kong, and we went to Ocean Park together. Karen is now spending her year abroad at Keio, just like Rachel.

We ate dinner at a cafe near the station, the food was quite cheap but almost all the other customers in the cafe were smoking, so by the end of the night we all smelt like cigarettes. Ewww. I had to smell like that until this morning when I came back to Osaka.

I took the Hankyu highway bus from Yokohama to Senri-chuo. The bus had arrived half an hour early, and I had to wait for at least an hour and a half for the first bus back to the university, so instead of the bus I took the monorail, and came back to the dormitory at around seven.

The bus journey wasn't bad. There was blanket and slippers. I was on the window seat, but there were only three seats in a row (with aisles in between) so I didn't have to sleep next to a stranger. I slept for about five hours, until the driver woke us up at 0500 (why?) to tell us that we were in Shiga prefecture (hence close to Kyoto and Osaka, the destinations).

Today I'm taking things slowly. Took a little nap after a nice, long hot shower in the morning, and now I'm making pizzas - only because I'm really low on money and have nothing else in my food cupboard except for olive oil, flour, yeast, sundried tomatoes, red pesto and cheese.

The dough is now rising in the bowl, and my room is smelling like natto.